“Shake the Shark?”

The driver laughed.

“Yeah. You know? Like from the American television show.”

I looked at my brother. He didn’t know either.

Shake the Shark laughed all the same, then he started the engine to his car.

~

He’d met us at the houseboat docks just after sunrise. Now, we spent the next hour winding into the foothills beneath the Himalayas.

The city disappeared behind us.

The roads narrowed.

Villages shrank to clusters of stone houses with tin roofs, a single classroom school, and the occasional shop selling biscuits and bottled drinks.

Our horses waited where the pavement ended.

Two young men stepped forward to greet us. While they tightened saddles, my brother asked something he’d wondered since arriving in Kashmir.

“Are you Indian?”

One smiled.

“… Kashmiri?”

The other shook his head.

“We are mountain people.”

That seemed sufficient.

~

None of us had much experience on horseback.

I climbed into the saddle awkwardly, gripping the front with both hands. My horse barely acknowledged the extra weight before stepping onto a trail carved into the mountainside.

The path narrowed until it became little more than a shelf above the river.

Whitewater thundered below us, hidden beneath pine branches and boulders polished smooth by centuries of snowmelt.

Whenever the trail tilted toward the drop, I found myself leaning uphill, convinced balance alone might keep me alive.

The horse never hesitated.

It picked its way over loose stones with the confidence of something that had walked this trail a thousand times before.

The guides hardly watched the animals.

They walked ahead talking to one another, occasionally reaching back to steady a horse around a sharper corner before continuing their conversation.

~

By midday, we stopped beside the river.

Our guide opened a cloth bundle his wife had packed that morning.

Rice.

Kidney beans.

Paneer.

Lentils.

We sat on warm rocks with our feet dangling above the rushing water while the horses grazed nearby.

Then the trail steepened.

The horses climbed another few switchbacks before stopping beneath a wall of broken rock.

One guide loosened the straps holding the packs.

From here, we walked.

Hands found roots. Boots searched for footholds between loose stones.

More than once I caught myself grabbing at the hillside to keep from sliding backward. Behind us, the valley widened with every step until the river became only a silver ribbon threading through the trees below.

At the ridge we stopped.

Peak after peak stretched into the haze. Blue upon blue, fading into distances I couldn’t name.

Our guides pointed toward one snowy summit on the horizon while speaking quietly in Kashmiri.

I nodded as though I understood.

The climb down proved easier. By late afternoon we were back among the horses, then the village.

Before we could leave, our guides waved us toward a nearby house. A boy of about six stood by the door eating walnuts.

One of our guides smiled.

“My son.”

Inside, their family spread rugs across the floor and poured steaming cups of Kashmiri tea.

We sat cross-legged together while they asked about California and laughed at how stiffly we climbed back to our feet.

~

As the sun dropped behind the mountains, Shake the Shark loaded us back into his taxi.

I watched the valley disappear behind us through the dusty window until the road bent, and the mountains slipped quietly out of sight.